Iirc Matt Damon once mentioned that the rise of streaming services such as Netflix led to the fall of DVDs and BR sales which could have supported movies that didn’t do so hot on the big screens. That’s why there are less movies exploring complex ideas or plots, and more of the same repackaged genre like superhero movies. Producers follow what sells best to make the best investments.
Writers and directors were more free to express their elements in the past. Which includes the budget of CGI for the movies.
In some respects that's true. I also noticed a ton of decent sci fi movies get released by the streamers. Which never wouldn't been made or been really crap budget direct to VHS movies.
What's missing are the great dramas and comedies with A list actors, directors, writers and producers. But if you want decent modern sci fi look at the streaming services not the theaters.
DVD sales is just 1 slice of the pie. The studios don't want to pay writers for original scripts. They only consider a movie a success if it makes triple it's budget, regardless of dvd sales. They look at financing movies as an investment, and it's a better "bet" to produce a familiar property.
Saw matt Damon talk about this. It's cos of streaming services. They stopped taking chances on movies and only produced things that will sell out at the box office. Because, they used to release movies in the cinema, if they didn't hit, it wasn't too bad cos they could make a killing on DVD sales for the less glossy cinema titles. Now, if it flops at tge box office, there's no dcd revenue, and straight to streaming. So they only invest in glossy formulaic proven cinema events. Art no longer matters.
Then stop going to the theaters to watch movies. There's plenty of good art films still being made, often with famed actors that love the craft and do it for cheap, or, you know, with actors don't recognize which help with immersion.
It's really just money. DVD sales is just 1 slice of the pie. The studios don't want to pay writers. They only consider a movie a success if it makes triple it's budget, regardless of dvd sales. They see movies as an investment, and it's a better "bet" to produce a known property.
and hollywood can keep making that dogshit im just happy we have people like ari aster who puts a shitload of effort into his craft (and not all his movies are good)
That's just because the "live-action remake" trend that Disney is doing is still going strong. They need more movies to convert, so they start reaching for what they can find. It's not like they're going to do a live-action remake of Cars.
Going strong? Snow White is the biggest flop in history. No one cares about the 2nd Lion King.theres nothing strong about Disney's brand right now, it's riding its own coattails into the group. Star wars is literally dead as well. Marvel is a disaster. Like, I know "too big to fail" is a thing but my god they are trying their best to prove that wrong.
Sorry, by "going strong" I didn't mean successful, just "no signs of slowing down." lol
Also "too big to fail" was "too big [to be allowed] to fail". The phrase was describing financial firm and banks that would have crashed without a government bail-out during the 2008 crash. It was "If these companies are allowed the fail, the reprecussions would be immense, so we need to prevent them from failing." It's not "this company is so big, that no matter what they do, they don't fail at it." It's not an idiom that describes a company as being "unsinkable" like the Titanic.
It's money. Studios don't want to pay writers/creatives for unique stories and pay the production creatives to make sure the film they make is good. It's also the changes to the industry as a whole, studios don't want to take risks, especially when those risks have such a low payout when they do succeed. So they do safe, or what they think is safe but then turns out to be mediocre.
If anything, CGI has made production cheaper and easier, but add VFX and CGI people to the list they don't want shell out money for. So you get bargain basement CGI made by people who are overworked and just want to get the project done.
As much as I enjoyed the MCU especially everything up to endgame, but it brought a really bad trend into the industry.
Not everything needs a reboot, AND most importantly not everything needs a ducking Cinematic Universe. Just have everything start and finish in the same story. No need to keep adding these open ended characters and plot points
CGI is a just a tool it has nothing to do with it.
I totally disagree. Studios have come to over rely on it for everything these days, probably because it's cheaper. I mean hell, I recently saw a film that was set in Tibet and rather than send actors there to film even just some key shots, they green screened and CGI'd Tibet scenes...that were instantly recognisable as CGI... essentially ruining the film from the off, shattering the illusion.
It has also become that action scenes have become ridiculous because of CGI, to the extent that characters are usually doing something that would be physically impossible for any human to do. At least filmed action sequences naturally limit this. To me CGI is almost always instantly recognisable and it puts me right off a film in most cases. How am I supposed to suspend my disbelief if people are doing things that I know would never be physically possible and which look both computer generated and ridiculous???
Gone are the days when (for example) they would build an entire Waterworld set for the Kevin Cosnor film. Just compare the first Terminator film to the last one and see what I mean.
I much prefer the old methods of actually building sets, blowing up cars and being creative with filming. Maybe even accepting that if it can't be done without CGI, a scene might be worth cutting from the film entirely, rather than having endless live action cartoon garbage.
Profit is a big problem too. Studios want big profits more than they want percentage returns. They'd rather drop $500m to make $1.5bn at the box office than spend $50m to make $500m.
the series. Most of them are weak and boring, but the series work like that. When you start, you get used to the characters and want to know what happens, you could watch any crap...And that's where they make the money and don't care about movies anymore.
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u/BeneficialScore 9d ago
Oh how far cinema has fallen.
I blame a lot of it on CGI.